Not From Silicon Valley

Around 800 million people worldwide don't have access to a toilet.

That means over 800 million people - everyday - are defecating wherever they can: behind a bush, on the side of a road, in a hole, or walking what could be miles and miles just to find the nearest toilet.

The problem gets worse (much worse) in densely populated areas, such as refugee camps and settlements. With thousands of people living in extreme proximity to one another, it becomes incredibly challenging to properly contain human waste without toilets or proper sanitation infrastructure.

As such, people go to the bathroom in what are called pit latrines: effectively holes in the ground. But without an organized system to contain and remove the waste from densely populated camps, feces eventually rises to the surface, dangerously infecting the camp in a viciously devastating cycle.

After seeing the conditions at several Syrian refugee camps throughout Turkey with his own eyes, Bara Wahbeh, a Palestinian-Jordanian engineer and entrepreneur, founded Akays Sanitation in 2018 to create a revolutionary toilet that would allow those living in settlements and those impoverished in the Global South to go to the bathroom - finally - in a dignified and sanitary way.

Warning: this episode does include explicit language and describes - in detail - the harsh conditions in which many in refugee camps throughout Turkey, Jordan, and Yemen live.

Population of Haiti: ~11.5 million

Number of Haitians living abroad: between 2 and 3 million

Known as the 'Haitian Diaspora', around 20% of Haitians have migrated ... outside of Haiti, to the likes of the US, the Dominican Republic, Canada, and throughout South America. And unfortunately, it's quite understandable.

Plagued for centuries by foreign intervention, devestating natural disasters, and political corruption, Haiti has become ... the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

But there's one Haitian entrepreneur, Jude Celiscar, fighting tirelessly to engage the Haitian Diaspora to reconnect with their homeland...to interact with and invest in the country they love: Haiti.

A pivot from a 'drop and ship' model sending goods from the US to Haiti now has Goodoo delivering groceries and farmed goods directly from Haitian farmers to Haitian consumers. And Goodoo's biggest client? The Haitian Diaspora...buying fresh Haitian produce from abroad for their families back home.

But with over a decade of trials, such as the 2010 Haitian Earthquake that killed over 200,000 Haitians and displaced over 5 million, to the recent assassination of the Haitian President, it's made entrepreneurship in Haiti all the more difficult and Jude's story all the more...unbelievable.

E-commerce is already a USD$5 trillion market. The likes of PayPal, Stripe, and many others have helped the global e-commerce space grow exponentially, serving effectively as the payment bridge between consumers and online retailers.

Whilst e-commerce has boomed in the US, China, and throughout Europe and India, there's one area of the world that has been slower to adapt:

The region made up of the former Soviet states, including:

Eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova

West / Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan

Eurasia: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan

Baltics: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

The total population of these 15 countries: 300+ million

But with different currencies and payment systems within each country, no payment gateway or processor has been able to integreate the region and start an e-commerce boom.

Until now.

Meet PAYZE, born and bred in the Eurasian country of Georgia. 

Since launching only last year, they've processed over 90,000 transactions and are growing 35% month on month. This type of growth is reason enough for PAYZE founder Giorgi Tsurtsumia's say:

"We're becoming the Stripe of the former Soviet states".

How? Tune in to find out.

In 2015, the minimum wage in Mexico was $4.

No, not per hour. 

Per day.

So when Melina Cruz Villafaña met Fernanda, an office cleaner, she learned of the harsh schedules that millions of Mexican women have every day:

1. wake up at 5am

It was Fernanda's conversation with Melina that inspired her to start Homely - a marketplace that connects cleaners and users to book safe, conveninient, and most importantly: fair cleaning services throughout Mexico.

But what started as a literal call center in 2015, dispatching different cleaners to different apartments in Mexico City, has transformed into a marketplace coordinating over 15,000 hours of B2C and B2C cleaning services per month throughout all of Mexico, with stories of social impact you'll have to hear to believe.

1 in 10,000: The physician to person ratio in The Gambia, one of the lowest in the world.

4%: The percentage of Gambians that has health insurance.

~USD$0.50: The cost to visit a public hospital in The Gambia.

USD$1 billion: The size of the counterfit and sub-standard medication market in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa is riddled with problems that have rippling effects on many African communities and economies. So after years of working at US pharmacy chain Walgreens in North Carolina, Gambian national Dr. Ismail Badjie returned home to Banjul, (The Gambia's capital) to revolutionize the Gambian healthcare sector by building the country's first vertically integrated, digitally friendly pharmacy in 2019.

Less than 2 years later, InnovaRX is helping tens of thousands of Gambians get access to affordable healthcare and FDA-approved medications, with Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia on the horizon.

But to go from Walgreens to changing healthcare as we know it in West Africa? A story heard only on Not From Silicon Valley.

In 2019, when Eja Batbold posted on Facebook that she'd be launching a platform that would help Mongolian students access study abroad opportunities, she got over 1,000 downloads in the first day. She knew she was on to something.

Less than 2 years later,  what started as a 'side gig' has turned into TomYo (meaning formula in Mongolian), which now with over 170,000 Mongolian students and 800 professional educators, serves as the biggest - by far! - EdTech platform in the entire country. 

But this rapid growth - with further global expansion on the horizon - hasn't come easy. 

Eja's story is one of ups, downs, and pivots - the Mongolian way.

In 2014, Erickson Mvezi, as an MBA student, decided to pitch to his class the idea of bringing the first delivery-on-demand concept to his home country: Angola. 

Think: Deliveroo, GrubHub, Door Dash, etc ... but for southern Africa.

At first, his classmates laughed at him. Now, seven years later, his idea for a school project has evolved into the widely-known Tupuca: an eight-figure business that serves as the biggest delivery platform in all of Angola.

But how Erickson got there? Well, it's one hell of a story.

A story that's ... Not From Silicon Valley

An online payments system in Nepal.

A cybersecurity business in Kazakhstan.

A food-delivery operation in Angola.

Founders from emerging and frontier markets face unique challenges when starting and scaling their businesses.

These are their stories.